Elaine was not so lightly affected.  “But,” she said severely, repressing her emotion, “I don’t understand, Mr. Kennedy, how scientific inquiry into ‘the poisoned kiss’ could necessitate this sort of thing.”

She pointed at the photographs accusingly.

“But,” he began, trying to explain.

“No buts,” she interrupted.

“Then you believe that I—­”

“How can you, as a scientist, ask me to doubt the camera,” she insinuated, very coldly turning away.

Kennedy rapidly began to see that it was far more serious than he had at first thought.

“Very well,” he said with a touch of impatience, “if my word is not to be taken—­I—­I’ll—­”

He had seized his hat and stick.

Elaine did not deign to answer.

Then, without a word he stalked out of the door.

As he did so, Elaine hastily turned and took a few steps after him, as if to recall her words, then stopped, and her pride got the better of her.

She walked slowly back to the chair by the table—­the chair he had been sitting in—­sank down into it and cried.

. . . . . . . .

Kennedy was moping in the laboratory the next day when I came in.

Just what the trouble was, I did not know, but I had decided that it was up to me to try to cheer him up.

“Say, Craig,” I began, trying to overcome his fit of blues.

Kennedy, filled with his own thoughts, paid no attention to me.  Still, I kept on.

Finally he got up and, before I knew it, he took me by the ear and marched me into the next room.

I saw that what he needed chiefly was to be let alone, and he went back to his chair, dropping down into it and banging his fists on the table.  Under his breath he loosed a small volley of bitter expletives.  Then he jumped up.

“By George—­I will,” he muttered.

I poked my head out of the door in time to see him grab up his hat and coat and dash from the room, putting his coat on as he went.

“He’s a nut today,” I exclaimed to myself.

Though I did not know, yet, of the quarrel, Kennedy had really struggled with himself until he was willing to put his pride in his pocket and had made up his mind to call on Elaine again.

As he entered, he saw that it was really of no use, for only Aunt Josephine was in the library.

“Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” she said innocently enough, “I’m so sorry she isn’t here.  There’s been something troubling her and she won’t tell me what it is.  But she’s gone to call on a young woman, a Florence Leigh, I think.”

“Florence Leigh!” exclaimed Craig with a start and a frown.  “Let me use your telephone.”

I had turned my attention in the laboratory to a story I was writing, when I heard the telephone ring.  It was Craig.  Without a word of apology for his rudeness, which I knew had been purely absent-minded, I heard him saying, “Walter—­meet me in half an hour outside that Florence Leigh’s house.”